Rotterdam. They stayed at the Victoria Hotel. Sam liked the middle-class Dutch girls, thought them “very pretty & fresh & amiable & intelligent” and wished “they would come over to us instead of Irish”.
July 15 Tuesday – The Clemens family left Rotterdam in the afternoon and went to Amsterdam, where they took rooms at the Hotel Doelen. From Sam’s notebook:
“Went to Museum & saw Rembrandt’s Night Watch & his portraits of some burghers, or burglars, have forgotten which. A Gaye’s tribe of 72 Americans arrived”. Note: Gay & Son were tour directors headquartered in London. They employed Joseph N. Verey, the Clemenses’ new courier.
July 16 Wednesday – The Clemens family saw the sights in Amsterdam.
July 17 and 18 Friday – The Clemens family left Amsterdam in the afternoon and went to The Hague, “stopping off 2 or 3 hours at Harlaam & visiting farm house, dairy, & beautiful country seat.”
Livy wrote about the farm to her mother on July 20, mentioning young Fraulein Korthals:
“She was a wholesome hearty girl of fifteen. She rolled the children in the hay, talked German with them, English with us, Dutch with the dairy woman and also spoke French and a little Italian”.
Sam also was enthralled by the country and did more art gazing:
Drove through Blumen-something [Bloemendaal] & saw lovely country seats.
No wonder Wm III pined for Holland, the country is so green & lovely, & quiet & pastoral & homelike. Boats sailing through the prairies, & fat cows & quaint windmills everywhere
At the Hague visited Museum & saw Rembrandt’s School of Anatomy & [Paul] Potter’s The Young bull (flies visible under the hairs.) This is absolute nature—in some other pictures too close a copy of nature is called a fault.
Drove out to a country palace were Motley used to visit long at a time with the royal family.
Good portrait of him there. Also some frescos which can’t be told from stone, high–reliefs, across the room. Drove there through the noblest woods I ever saw..
July 19 Saturday – The Clemens family left The Hague at 6 PM For Flushing. In the late evening they crossed the channel by night boat.